An ultrasound system such as a diagnostic ultrasound apparatus has characteristics capable of observing an interior of an object to be examined without destroying the object. The ultrasound system can be widely used particularly in a medical field as means capable of safe observation of internal tissues without the need of a surgical procedure such as laparotomy on a human body.
A heart is one of objects to be observed by the ultrasound system. A guideline is defined, for views of the heart that is the object to be examined, on the acquisition of several standard views (hereinafter, referred to as “guideline”) so that a uniform consideration can be given no matter who observes the heart, and the ultrasound system provides images of the standard views based on this guideline. The standard views of the heart based on the guideline include parasternal views, apical views, subcostal views, suprasternal views, and the like.
A conventionally used method is one for imaging cardiac views one by one by an examiner who is a user while the examiner is operating an ultrasound probe. There has been recently proposed a system for acquiring 3D volume data that is three-dimensional information such as 3D cardiac ultrasound images using a special ultrasound probe, and automatically acquiring a plurality of standard views from the 3D volume data.
Examples of related prior art documents include Patent Document 1. A technique of Patent Document 1 intends to achieve improvement of boundary detection of a heart, and includes deforming a boundary model so that an error between a boundary pattern obtained by applying the boundary model to volume data and a predetermined boundary pattern model becomes small. Next, a boundary detecting unit, which is configured to detect a left ventricle boundary from the volume data, displays the detected left ventricle boundary on an image of a cardiac view orthogonal to at least one axis of three axes of a left ventricle coordinate system together with the image of the cardiac view.